What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT?

Re:What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT? by kjs3 on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @11:02AM (#25210629)

The NeXT at launch was $6500 list for the base model. There were academic deals where you could get it for less, but that's not what we are talking about. And you could get a machine for $3k at least as fast in 1988; the 68030 was past it's prime. If by 'NeXTstation', you mean the 'Slab' pizzabox NeXT, that was $5k list for the mono version, released in 1990, and had a 68040. You could get a much faster machine for $3k in 1990.

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Re:What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT? by GlenTheMachine on Thursday November 26, 2020 @07:07PM (#25224454)

The trade name for the original $6500 cube was the NeXTcube (68030). The names for the pizza box workstations were the NeXTstation (68040/25 MHz) and NeXTstation Turbo (68040/33 MHz). The NeXTstation spec’d out at 15 MIPS.

You could buy a NeXTstation for $4995 on the open market, and considerably less with an educational discount.

You could buy a Sun Sparcstation 1, which was released a bit earlier and ran a RISC 20 MHz processor but it was $9,000.

If I recall correctly, SGI workstations like the SGI Indigo at the time started at somewhere around $7500 and depending on configuration could be nearly $40k. The SGI Indy, which was the low end SGI machine, was faster and priced at an identical $4995 - but it wasn’t released until mid 1993.

The first Macs to use the 68040 weren’t released until mid 1992. And they also cost $7,000+.

I am unaware of a machine that was available in 1990 for under $5,000 that had more horsepower. If you can point me to one I’ll gladly concede. But at the time I was actually a NeXT campus consultant, which meant I was selling them and knew the specs of both the NeXT products and the major competitors, and I’m not aware of one. Certainly by 1992 the Mac and high end PCs were catching up, albeit both with vastly inferior operating systems.

That was a long time ago and I could well be wrong. But if so I want to see evidence.

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Re:What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT? by icedchai on Wednesday November 25, 2020 @02:21PM (#25213121)

The fact is NeXT machines were dogs. The OS was nice but the hardware was very underpowered. I have a slab in my retro collection. It looks pretty, but a Sun Sparc from the same era is much more powerful.

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Re:What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT? by GlenTheMachine on Thursday November 26, 2020 @07:42PM (#25224626)

You’re comparing computers that sold at very different price points.

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Re:What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT? by wpietri on Friday November 27, 2020 @10:58AM (#25229678)

But to the same markets. NeXTs were being sold both to the workstation and to the personal computer market. They were cheap but underpowered for a workstation, making them not very good for worksation-ish things, because you couldn't scale up. For a personal computer, they were very expensive, so they didn't do well there either.

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Re:What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT? by GlenTheMachine on Friday November 27, 2020 @02:00PM (#25231600)

I’m not arguing they had a good business plan - clearly they did not. All I’m arguing is that they were very good computers for the price, both in terms of software and hardware.

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Re:What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT? by icedchai on Thursday November 26, 2020 @10:27PM (#25225328)

You are right. Sun's were much more expensive. But I would argue both were in the same class. NeXT also frequently compared themselves to Sun.

I'm pretty sure Sun offered huge academic discounts. I never saw NeXT at any of the local universities... It was mostly Sun and DEC.

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